Gurumantra Khalsa, right, runs a meeting for residents of Riverside's University neighborhood on Thursday, July 11. Police and city officials were there to answer questions and explain how they're addressing concerns with single-family homes rented to multiple tenants.

In March 2011, the owner of a single-family home on Nisbet Way near UC Riverside stopped by City Hall and got a permit to double the number of bedrooms â" from three to six â" by putting in new walls and windows.

Angry area homeowners say the approval of such permits is outrageous, because the cityâs ordinance restricts rentals in areas zoned for single-family homes to four unrelated tenants.

Riverside officials say they understand the frustration, but have to grant the permits to anyone who meets building codes, and the code doesnât address why the bedrooms are being added.

This dilemma is at the heart of University-area homeownersâ current crusade to make their neighborhood more livable. But with residents demanding a moratorium on extra-room permits that city officials insist they canât legally stop granting, thereâs no obvious or easy solution to the conflict.

The problems that gave rise to this debate arenât new or unique to Riverside, but homeowners recently organized and started taking their concerns to City Council meetings.

They say theyâre fed up with a situation that has gotten worse as UCRâs enrollment has swelled and more homes have been bought by investors and turned into rentals. Residents say inconsiderate renters throw loud, drunken parties, park on the lawn, scatter trash around, and speed down the street, to name a few complaints.

Now, after âsuffering in silence for years,â as neighborhood leader Gurumantra Khalsa describes it, homeowners are demanding action from the city and theyâre starting to get it. But the extra bedroom permits remain a sticking point.

PERMIT REFORM SOUGHT

The University neighborhood is roughly bounded by Chicago Avenue to the west, Spruce Street to the north, Box Springs Mountain reserve on the east and Le Conte Drive to the south.

City records show that since the beginning of 2010, Riverside has given 18 permits to add extra bedrooms, usually by putting up walls in the living room, in University neighborhood homes. In every case, the home already had three or four bedrooms, and in all but three cases, the new total was five or six bedrooms.

Area resident Letitia Pepper, an attorney, was heartily applauded at a neighborhood meeting Thursday, July 11, when she insisted the city should put a moratorium in place, then make a new rule that prohibits creating extra bedrooms in zones near the cityâs one college and three universities.

Pepper said sheâs had six offers to buy her property since January.

âOne reason they want to buy it is they know in this area they can turn it into a dorm and rent it to a bunch of students,â she said.

Code enforcement officials have received plenty of complaints that property owners are renting too many rooms. From July 2011 to now, there have been 61 cases of alleged violation of the four-renter ordinance, Code Enforcement Manager Gary Merk wrote in an email.

Of those cases, 24 were in the University neighborhood. Three cases citywide ended in citations for the property owner, of which one was near UCR.

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